Just posting in this section should tell you that I am very new to this. I have attempted to install three different distributions of *nix without success. I have been to the HCL here and not found my hardware but I am convinced that the error is in what I am doing, not what I am installing. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

My primary choice is Solaris; I need to learn as much as I can because it is what I will be tested on. This choice failed because of my NIC card (unsupported) took me a week in the Solaris forum and many Google searches to learn that.

My second choice was Fedora Core, bought the (huge book) and install DVD just knowing it would work for me. Nope, not a chance, does not see my HDDs during install. When the install guide gave me the choice to add drivers I added all the SATA drivers to no avail.

I then decided to read through here and find the distro that seems to work for everyone yet expandable to where I can use it to learn with. The Ubuntu Bible now became my new paperweight. When I boot the DVD my screen goes blank and a “no signal” dialog box appears.

There is no way I believe all this is a problem with software. Here is my hardware, what should I do?

GA MA770-DS3 motherboard (supported all distro HCL, not found here)
NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS video card (supported Solaris, Red Hat, not found here)
Seagate ST3160815AS and ST3500418AS HDDs (HCL not found)

Everything is used onboard except video card. Drives are without jumpers and connected to the motherboard at the 0 and 1 slots. They are not configured in an array. The 160gb drive in my windows drive and the 500gb is for *nix.

Thank you for taking the time to read all this.
Rick

Where are you getting your distro disks from. Is it from the books you are buying?
I asked this because you mentioned Fedora Core, which has to be a couple of years old. Book versions are always behind.
With a fairly new computer like yours, I'd first suggest you find & download the latest distro DVD.
For those you mentioned, it would be: Fedora 12 or Ubuntu 9.10

Thank you for the reply, though I feel a little foolish now. I ordered the Solaris DVD set from Sun because I wanted the most up to date copy, but when I bought the books I grabbed the first ones I saw. Ubuntu is 2007, and Fedora is 2008 release 5. This I guess is a major contributor to my problem.

Anyone know a good ISO burner, I think I need one now.

Thank you
Rick

Well it was worth a try anyway... Fedora 12... Screen goes blank and out of range after splash screen. Tried twice.

Fedora 12 apparently comes with an experimental nvidia driver called nouveau which causes some problems for Nvidia users.
You can overcome it this way:
At the blank screen, press Ctrl+Alt+F2 and login as root (no password).
init 3 takes you to runlevel 3 without GUI

Edited xorg.conf to substitue nouveau for vesa using sed:
Try to start X: